Teapot Tantrums

How to Brainwash a Nation? We're Already In (or AT) the Third Stage!

People in the media will pooh-pooh observations by Conservatives and Republicans that there is an active plan at work to subvert our country with the goal of converting it to a Leninist/Marxist state. They can pooh-pooh this all day long if they like, but it's easy to see it if you bother to look objectively, which the media seems unable (or unwilling) to do ... perhaps because they're complicit?

Don't believe me? What would it take to convince you? Perhaps the words of someone who worked in the KGB, someone who actively worked to bring these conversions to pass? Someone who knows the goal and how it's easily achieved?

Remember, Kruschev said that the US would fall to communism without a shot being fired, but that it would fall from within. They (the Soviet Union, at the time) would feed us small amounts of communism at a time until 

Watch the video interview of a former KGB agent (originally broadcast in 1985), in which he lays out the four steps to subverting a culture to turn it to Leninism/Marxism ... People, we're obviously either at or primed for step 3 -- the Crisis portion of our program.

Then consider the words of a Townhall blogger from a year ago and see if you can pick out any truths. I sure can.

The ONLY thing I know and can be sure of is the fact that God is in control. Without that assurance, I would totally freak out and lose hope. I've read the book and, Thank God .. we win.

Back to Simplicity? You Might Want to Rethink That

A lot of people who hate corporations (make sure to say it with a sneer on your face so those around you will know you think of them as eeeeeeeebil) and the modern way of life say they'd like to go back to simpler, pre-corporate times. They would like to get back to "natural" things like eating only locally-grown foods, not killing animals for food, wearing only natural fibers, and the like.

These people are the same ones, a lot of times, that believe the government should take care of us all (benevolently, of course) with free health care (it's a *RIGHT* don't ya know), and making sure that *everything* is "equal".

Let's look at this. In the good old medieval days, people still worked for their sustenance, their shelter, their clothing. The kings (or let's call them the old-time government) didn't take care of them ... and those self-same kings or their lords (corporations?) still got their taxes, one way or another. The kings with lots of lords got the taxes from them, who got the taxes (or whatever) from the peasants ... 'course, you know they had to keep some for themselves, too, for the upkeep of the castle and lands that kept the peasants safe (or at least tried to).

If the peasants (that's you and me) had coinage, the lord got a percentage ('course, I understand that those taxes got hiked periodically, depending on whether the king had to fight a war or play host to another king) ... if the peasant had no coinage, they had to pay with the goods or harvest they produced with their hard labor and the sweat of their brow... and sometimes they were required to spend a certain amount of time in actual servitude to the king.

Oh, and that eating only locally-grown food thing .. let's just hope there isn't a drought or a blight or someone diverts your water (like the federal gov't has been known to do in Oregon and California in the past ten years ... in the name of helping the environment) ... good luck with that.

The king/lords didn't dole out clothing ... people raised fiber animals (oh, and cows and pigs, 'cause let's remember that people back then had no problem with wearing leather), which they used not only for fiber, but also for (eeeebil) meat to feed their families. (Remember, no contraception back in those days .. ever hear the old adage: The rich got richer and the poor got children?) I imagine that, if you were lucky enough to have some sheep, you sheared them, carded the wool, spun it, wove it, sewed it, and clothed your family. IF you were fortunate enough to have more than strictly what your family needed for a given season, you probably either put up extra for a leaner time when it wasn't as plentiful, or you took the extra and traded it to a neighbor who might have something you didn't. Leftists might call this the first "co-op" system ... I like to think of it as the first exercises in free trade.

The king/lord didn't give the peasants remember (that's you and me) food to keep your family healthy, the tools to grow said food, and weapons with which to keep your family safe. Nope! The peasants (remember who that is) had to grow their own food and be diligent about taking very good care of their crops, for without them they and their families would starve. The peasants had to fashion their tools out of whatever they could, possibly harnessing animal labor (remember, animals couldn't sue their "human companions" back in those days, as some in federal gov't would like to make "possible" in these days). If a peasant didn't have the right tools, he learned to make them, to make do with what he had, or traded with another neighbor for something the neighbor valued. (Again with the free trade??) And the weapons .... sticks, staffs, rocks ... whatever ... they weren't thought of as eeeeeebil, but rather as a necessity for keeping the family, the home, the goods, the crops, the animals ... safe ... from others who would like to take what wasn't theirs, to take what they hadn't worked for. (Wow, those people have been with us in one form or another for a very long time, haven't they??)

And then there was health care.

Let's see ... actually, there wasn't health care. And no one was "entitled" to health care. If you were fortunate enough to live near someone who knew something about the healing arts, about herbs and tonics, and basic first aid ('course, they didn't call it that back then, did they) ... you *might* be able to get help when Seamus broke his leg or Meg needed help delivering her baby ... (unless you were concerned about the healer being a witch [seems like most healers are noted as being women ... men being out growing crops and tending/raising livestock and such?], which might have sometimes been true, sometimes not).

There was little to no innovation in medicine in what is now considered the English-speaking world the until ... what? ... the 1700s-ish?? Samuel Hanhemann first proposed homeopathic remedies around 1796, which he developed through rigorous trials ... before things like homeopathy, people didn't have a *lot* of medicines to choose from. After the 1700s, I'm thinking medical advances started coming more rapidly ... but back in the medieval times, you were lucky to get someone who knew how to sew up a wound .. probably more likely to get a mustard plaster or poultice (or whatever) and a dirty bandage. Back then it wasn't even widely held that people should wash their hands or bathe, for pity's sake!

But to expect the king to send someone to your hovel to look at a splinter or tell you why you felt a certain way ... and let's be honest .. there was probably a lot of depression that "just was", and things got infected, and food spoiled and caused illness, and babies didn't all survive, and there was no CPR, and people died of "the fever" or "consumption", and people didn't all understand about sanitation.....

Everyday Life in the Middle Ages 

Average Lifespan Expectancies (scroll down to the table broken out by "ages")

An Introduction to the Middle Ages

Life might have been "simple", but it required hard work, perseverance, a sense of duty, and a willingness to be content with what you had, without demanding what you want or feel you need -- as your right, as your "due" -- from those who had more.

Maybe it's just me, but these leftists who cry out for a return to a simpler time, who decry (with a sneer) corporations, free trade, class systems, hard work, health care that costs something ... they're just crying out for a "simpler" time that was harsher in many ways, allowed for a lot less enjoyment of life, killed you faster, had a lot less security ... they're crying out for what's really just an earlier version of life today (minus faith, electronics and hygiene ... and a few other things).

If you like sci-fi books at all, I can recommend an interesting series ... "The Change Series" ... it's by S.M. Stirling, and takes place in the Pacific NorthWet (yes, I leave out the "s" because it's fun and unexpected, and it can be so wet here ... when we're not 20" below the average rainfall we should've had this year) and specifically most of the first three books takes place in the Willamette Valley, where I grew up.

Dies the Fire

The Protector's War

A Meeting at Corvallis

The Sunrise Lands

The Scourge of God

The Sword of the Lady

I've read the first five of the series (the sixth was to come out this Autumn, but I don't know if it's out yet), and they're well-written, but they can freak you out a bit sometimes (ok, they can freak *me* out a bit 'cause I can have a very vivid imagination). It's interesting to drive around the Willamette Valley and see where some of the incidents in the books take place and imagine what it might look like after "the change". They're interesting, but they're not gentle. A post-change world would not be easy.

If the leftists of the world think it would be so easy to go back to this "simpler" time, let them read through this series and get a taste for what that kind of change could be like, at least from the author's imagination. Maybe they could get the idea ... and then again, maybe I could wake up from this very odd dream that America has become.

Mandated Minimum Wage Hikes Have Hurt Teens, Others

Oregon started with the mandated minimum wage hikes several years ago. Our state's minimum wage is now at $8.40, with a mandated increase coming January 1.  Our state's unemployment numbers are among the highest in the nation. According to the Oregon Employment Department:

Oregon’s Employment Situation: August 2009
Oregon’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose to 12.2 percent in August from the revised July figure of 11.8 percent. Oregon’s unemployment rate has been close to 12 percent for the six month period March through August, following a steep run-up during the prior nine months. Oregon’s unemployment rate was 6.5 percent in August 2008.

The U.S. seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose from 9.4 percent in July to 9.7 percent in August, its highest level in 26 years.

Whether you agree with mandatory hikes in the minimum wage, or whether you support a minimum wage (or not), the evidence has shown that these hikes have had a detrimental effect on our economy. The lower-wage jobs, which had traditionally been used as a jumping off point where people could get their act together, gain some skills and work experience that would translate to getting better jobs, or as a place to make ends meet while you went to school or needed extra money ... well, that concept has gone by the wayside.

I work for a payroll company, and I can tell you that employers don't just have to budget for increases in their hourly wage payouts. They also have to consider the withholding of both the employer *and* employee portions of FICA (Social Security to you and me) and Medicare (remember, that *other* thing we can't qualify for 'til we're old or disabled, are *required* to pay into, and probably *won't* be there when we're finally old enough ... or it will be a shadow of its former self), not to mention what they have to pay in for federal and state unemployment taxes ... and in places with public transportation systems, they likely have to pay in based on an employee's wages for that, too.

I wish I could break it down for you based on age demographics, but I don't know where to go for all that info. I know there are critics out there that will claim that lower wages hurt people and are just a way for "corporations" (remember to use a sneer on your face while you say it) to make money .. but remember that corporations are the entities that provide jobs, and jobs are what provide you with work that helps you *earn* your income ... provided that you aren't one of these twits that believes they shouldn't have to to work for anything and that government should just take care of you.

However, I can share with you what I found in the Wall Street Journal's Oct 3 article regarding teenagers and the July '09 increase in the federal minimum wage, which rose to $7.25.

The Young and the Jobless

The minimum wage hike has driven the wages of teen employees down to $0.00.

Yesterday's September labor market report was lousy by any measure, with 263,000 lost jobs and the jobless rate climbing to 9.8%. But for one group of Americans it was especially awful: the least skilled, especially young workers. Washington will deny the reality, and the media won't make the connection, but one reason for these job losses is the rising minimum wage.

Earlier this year, economist David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, wrote on these pages that the 70-cent-an-hour increase in the minimum wage would cost some 300,000 jobs. Sure enough, the mandated increase to $7.25 took effect in July, and right on cue the August and September jobless numbers confirm the rapid disappearance of jobs for teenagers.

The September teen unemployment rate hit 25.9%, the highest rate since World War II and up from 23.8% in July. Some 330,000 teen jobs have vanished in two months. Hardest hit of all: black male teens, whose unemployment rate shot up to a catastrophic 50.4%. It was merely a terrible 39.2% in July.

The biggest explanation is of course the bad economy. But it's precisely when the economy is down and businesses are slashing costs that raising the minimum wage is so destructive to job creation. Congress began raising the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour in July 2007, and there are now 691,000 fewer teens working.

As the minimum wage has risen, the gap between the overall unemployment rate and the teen rate has widened, as it did again last month. (See nearby chart.) The current Congress has spent billions of dollars—including $1.5 billion in the stimulus bill—on summer youth employment programs and job training. Yet the jobless numbers suggest that the minimum wage destroyed far more jobs than the government programs helped to create.

Congress and the Obama Administration simply ignore the economic consensus that has long linked higher minimum wages with higher unemployment. Two years ago Mr. Neumark and William Wascher, a Federal Reserve economist, reviewed more than 100 academic studies on the impact of the minimum wage. They found "overwhelming" evidence that the least skilled and the young suffer a loss of employment when the minimum wage is increased. Whatever happened to President Obama's pledge to follow the science? Democrats prefer to cite a few outlier studies known to be methodologically flawed.

State lawmakers are also at fault. At least 10 states have raised their minimum wages above the federal level in the last decade, largely in response to union lobbying and in the name of helping the working poor. Four states with among the highest wage rates are California, Massachusetts, Michigan and New York. Studies have shown in each case that their wage policies killed jobs for teens. The Massachusetts teen employment rate sank by one-third when the minimum wage rose by 88% between 1995 and 2008.

According to new numbers from the Labor Department, in 2008 only 1.1% of Americans who work 40 hours a week or more even earned the minimum wage. In other words, 98.9% of 40-hour-a-week workers earn more than the minimum. The data also show that teenagers are five times more likely to earn the minimum wage than adults. Minimum wage jobs are nearly all first-time or part-time jobs, and an estimated two of every three minimum wage workers get a pay raise within a year on the job.

Study after study reveals that there are long-term career benefits to working as a teenager and that these benefits go well beyond the pay that these youths receive. A study by researchers at Stanford found that those who do not work as teenagers have lower long-term wages and employability even after 10 years. A high-wage society can only come by making workers more productive, and by destroying starter jobs the minimum wage may reduce long-term earnings.

Another recent study across 17 OECD nations, also by Messrs. Neumark and Wascher, found a highly negative association between higher minimum wages and youth employment rates. But it also concluded that having a starter wage, well below the minimum, counteracts much of this negative jobs impact. If Congress won't suspend its recent minimum wage hike, it should at least create a teenage wage of $4 or $5 an hour to help put hundreds of thousands of teens back to work. White House chief economic adviser Larry Summers has endorsed this in the past. Without this change, expect the teen unemployment to remain very high for a long time.

The wonder of it all is that liberals still call "progressive" a policy that has driven the wages of hundreds of thousands of the lowest skilled workers down to $0.00.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A12

My good friend and blogfather, Gullyborg of Resistance is Futile, posted his own piece, way ahead of the WSJ. Take a gander here and his follow-up observation here on what it will/might for coming elections.

Michael Moore Hates Capitalism

Michael Moore, stalwart defender of "the people", hates capitalism.

This man has made millions off of like-minded people who are willing to spend their hard-earned (???) bucks to watch his movies tearing apart facets of our fine country. And he keeps churning them out, and his like-minded sheeple keep going in droves to see them. And now he's releasing Capitalism: A Love Story...

... and his like-minded sheeple will flock together to see his latest bit of "wisdom" ... without ever getting the irony.

If Michael Moore is so strongly anti-capitalist, shouldn't he pay everyone top dollar for their own good (not for their services) and distribute his movie for free and insist that people be allowed to view it for free?

Ah, but this limousine liberal needs those suckers patrons, doesn't he, or he'll be driving around in a beat up foreign car for real, instead of how he pretends to. This is a guy with a penthouse suite, a fancy driver, etc. who pretends to be one of us, "one of the little guys"...why do people believe it? Because they can't be bothered to actually find out what's behind what they believe.

Seasonal Flu Vaccine Makes H1N1 Hit More Likely? So Says Canadian CDC

The Globe and Mail up in Canada reports that a study's been done which shows people who get vaccinated for the seasonal flu vaccine could be twice as likely to contract the H1N1 (swine flu) virus than those who don't. 

On Sunday Quebec joined Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia in suspending seasonal flu shots for anyone under 65 years of age. Quebec's Health Ministry announced it would postpone vaccinations until January, clearing the autumn months for health professionals to focus on vaccinating against H1N1, which is expected to the more severe influenza strain this season.

“By the time the H1N1 wave is over, there will be ample time to vaccinate for seasonal flu,” Dr. Rubinstein said.

B.C. is expected to announce a similar suspension during a press conference Monday morning.

It seems that the seasonal flu vaccine is still recommended for those 65 and older, due to immunities that would've been built up during the 1957 out break of swine flu.

Read the article and decide for yourself.